Dr. Courtney Crittenden stands in her Brock Hall office. Photo by Angela Foster.
Sabbatical Spotlight highlights the meaningful and innovative work faculty pursue during professional development leave. The series also shows how leave can support scholarly, creative, teaching and professional endeavors.
Professional development leave is an investment the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga makes in its faculty, and through them, in every student, colleague and community member they serve. If you’ve been thinking about applying, now is the time. The deadline is Oct. 31.
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What if the best textbook for UTC students was written specifically for them and it was free? UC Foundation Professor of Criminal Justice Courtney Crittenden created one for criminal justice students.
Crittenden, a UTC faculty member since 2015, used her professional development leave in fall 2025 to create a free textbook and a full course package for CRMJ 1100: Introduction to Criminal Justice.
The 12-chapter open educational resource, “Introduction to the Criminal Justice System,” is publicly available through UTC Scholar. Crittenden also developed lecture slides, test banks, chapter quizzes, reading checks, in-class activities and out-of-class assignments.
Her goal extended beyond replacing a textbook. She wanted to build a curriculum around what UTC faculty believe students need before moving into more specialized criminal justice courses.
“You can pick a textbook and hope for the best,” said Crittenden, who received a master’s degree in criminal justice from UTC in 2009. “I brought in several different texts to get a more comprehensive curriculum for what we would like to see.”
Her textbook begins with an overview of laws and the justice system, then moves quickly into policing, courts and corrections. It includes juvenile justice, terrorism and cybercrime, among other topics.
A traditional textbook can cost a student about $150, Crittenden said. With many students taking the introductory course each year, a free option can add up to significant savings. But affordability was only one part of the project.
Crittenden built reading checks into each section so students can answer a few questions before moving forward. The checks count toward their grades and help students keep pace with the material.
She also made the course package useful for faculty members who teach it. Slides include notes for instructors, and each chapter has three to five activities that professors can choose from. They range from videos and discussion questions to case-based work, including a scenario about reducing violence in Chattanooga.
“I’m really proud of those as well,” Crittenden said. “Hopefully we’ll get our students to interact with one another, discuss and think critically about these issues at the very beginning of their academic career.”
Crittenden asked criminal justice colleagues with subject-area expertise to review chapters as she developed them, including Dr. Karen McGuffee for constitutional law, Dr. Tammy Garland for juvenile justice, and Dr. Christina Policastro and Dr. Katelyn Hancock for victimization.
She also worked with Levi Fleming of the UTC Library to identify and adapt existing open educational resources, and with Troy Carroll in the Walker Center for Teaching and Learning, who was “instrumental in getting the Pressbooks integration seamlessly into Canvas.” The library’s Pressbooks platform gave her the tools to assemble, revise and publish the textbook.
In addition, Crittenden conducted interviews with alumni working in criminal justice-related fields to help students see how course topics may apply after graduation.
The assessment work is not finished. Crittenden developed an assessment plan using pre- and post-tests across several semesters to determine whether the curriculum is meeting its goals. Her standard is straightforward: The free materials must be at least as good as commercial options, and preferably better.
She said professional development leave provided the time to complete work that would have taken much longer alongside teaching, research and service responsibilities. It also gave her room to use campus resources, including the Walker Center for Teaching and Learning and its Teaching Alongside AI course, and the UTC Library Studio.
For faculty considering leave, Crittenden said colleagues can help turn an early idea into a viable proposal.
“I think if you want to take professional development leave, you should talk to your chair and to faculty members who have taken it before,” she said. “Get advice from your colleagues about how to turn it into a project.”
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Department of Criminal Justice
